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From my childhood until I qualified as a dentist in 1982, aged 30, I drew and painted a great deal. Creating pictures was one of my favourite pastimes. In the late 1970s when I was already studying to become a dentist, I joined a weekly print-making class. It was held in the West Hampstead studio of my mother’s cousin, the etcher/engraver Dolf Rieser (1898-1983; see: https://dolfrieser.com/biography/ ).

The image above is from an etching that I created in Dolf’s studio. It is a composition inspired by electron micography of intra-cellular structures. At the time I created it, I had just finished a PhD in a biological subject and was studying biology that was considered necessary to qualify as a dentist. Interestingly, Dolf had also studied biology (genetics) in his youth, receiving a doctorate in the subject. He took to artistic pursuits after completing his studies in biology. Later in his life he wrote a book called “Art and Science” (published in 1972 by Studio Vista). Dolf was an inspiring teacher with a great understanding of compositional technique.

In 1982, I began practising as a dentist. It goes without saying that a dentist’s work involves a great deal of use of the hands and fingers. All day long, five days a week, I was doing the fiddly kind of things with my hands and fingers. Prior to qualification as a dentist, I had used my hands and fingers to create often complex images (drawings, paintings, etchings, and copper engravings). I found that my urge to create images diminished rapidly after I began practising dentistry. I suppose that the clinical activities satisfied my need to employ my manual dexterity in other ways. Sadly, now that I am retired I have not (yet) gone back to creating images. Now my fingers are kept busy at the keyboard, creating books and blog articles.

This patient of mine was a local school teacher. An educated person, you would imagine.

One rainy afternoon he sat on my dental chair. Then, I reclined it so that he was lying almost horizontal: his head and mouth at one end of the chair and his feet at least five and a half feet from his mouth. I administered the local anaesthetic, waited for anaesthesia to become established, and then repaired the teacher’s decayed molar tooth with a silver amalgam ‘filling’. When the procedure was over, the teacher left my surgery apparently quite content.

An hour or so later, the teacher returned to our practice and asked the receptionist to allow him to speak to me. He entered my surgery and pointed to a mark on one of his brown suede shoes.

“I believe that you must have dropped some of your chemicals on my shoe while you were treating me,” he said.

I looked at the mark and quickly realised that this fellow was hoping to be compensated, possibly for a sufficient to buy a new pair of shoes.

“Unlikely,” I replied, “while I was treating you, you were lying horizontally. Your mouth was a long way from your feet. If I had dropped something, it would not have fallen anywhere near your feet.”

“Mmmmh,” he replied.

“Furthermore,” I added, “it’s been raining heavily all afternoon. Maybe, you picked up that mark while walking along the wet streets.”

The teacher left, and I heard no more about the problem with his footwear. I was left thinking what an unintelligent man he was, and that somebody had qualified as being capable of teaching young people.

One of my dental colleagues, a very confident fellow and a competent operator, told me this true story many years ago.

One day, he had a nervous male patient, a well-built strong looking man. However, the patient was extremely anxious, as many dental patients often are. The patient needed to have root canal treatment and was convinced that he would experience much pain during the procedure.

As my colleague prepared his local anaesthetic syringe, he said, trying to be reassuring:

“Don’t worry, sir, after I have given you this injection, the procedure won’t hurt a bit!”

The patient turned to my colleague brandishing his tightly clenched fist, and said:

I cannot remember the name of the person who taught us dental pathology back in 1981 at University College Hospital Dental School, but one thing he told us made a deep impression on me. He said that it was unlikely that we would see oral cancers frequently in general dental practice, but when we did see one we would feel a certain ‘jizz’ (our teacher’s word), a feeling that we were looking at something unusual and worrying.

One day when I was in practice, a delightful late middle-aged woman visited my surgery as a new patient. She said there was something on her tongue that had been bothering her for several weeks and was making eating and speech difficult. She had been to her doctor (medical), who told her that she had had a bee sting on her tongue. She told me that she had been taking antibiotics prescribed for it for quite a time and the condition was only getting worse.

I had never encountered anyone with a bee sting on their tongue. The lady’s story and her doctor’s diagnosis sounded strange. She showed me her tongue. As soon as I saw the huge ulcer on the side of it and its peculiar border, I felt that ‘jizz’, which our pathology teacher had mentioned. I knew that the poor lady had, almost without a doubt, a carcinoma on her tongue. I told her my suspicions, and she looked relieved, and was grateful. Clearly, she had not believed her doctor’s story. I phoned the local oral surgery department, and they admitted her promptly.

About a year later, the lady reappeared. During the surgical treatment of her cancer, she had lost several teeth and wanted a denture to replace them. Sadly, her mouth was by now so distorted that making a prosthesis was beyond my competence. I referred her to a prosthetic specialist. Unfortunately, she did not live long enough for his work to be completed.

Whether earlier intervention would have saved her life, or at least prolonged it, is a question than cannot be answered.

In my 35 years in dental practice, I only ever saw two patients with obvious oral cancers. However, I did refer many patients to have unusual looking lesions seen by oral surgical specialists. None of these gave me that ‘jizz’ nor turned out to be cancerous.

People are naturally quite exacting about the appearance of their front teeth. Apart from self-esteem, people judge others by the state of the teeth in their smiles and while speaking. As a dentist, I was often challenged by my patients’ desires to have a smile which looked good.

On one occasion, a young girl in her teens came to me with a loose denture, which she wore to replace a missing upper incisor. I suggested to her that she could get rid of the cumbersome dental prosthesis if I replaced her missing tooth with a barely invasive adhesive bridge attached to a tooth neighbouring the gap. She agreed, and the bridge was prepared. I fitted the new replacement tooth, which looked very realistic to me. Repeatedly, I asked the young girl whether she wanted have a look in a mirror to see the new tooth in place . Repeatedly, she refused, saying:

“I’ll look at it when I get home.”

I never heard from her again. So, I can only assume that either she loved the bridge or she was so disappointed that she visited another dentist. I have come across this behaviour several times since then especially with patients who have been supplied with a denture bearing a complete set of teeth. However, most patients prefer to see what they are getting.

Many years later, I prepared two crowns (‘caps’) to restore a lady’s two upper central incisors, the most noticeable teeth in most people’s smiles. When the crowns arrived back from the laboratory, I removed the temporary crowns that had been protecting the prepared teeth. Then, without using cement (‘dental adhesive’) I placed the new crowns on the patient’s teeth so that she could say whether or not she approved of their shape and appearance. I noticed that the pocelain on the crowns had a pale greenish tinge. I looked up at my dental nurse. From her expression, I realised that she had also noticed the less than desirable dicolouration. I was fully prepared to sent the crowns back to the laboratory to have their colour improved when the patient exclaimed:

Hearing this, and seeing the smile on her face, I felt that it would be foolish to have the crowns remade. So, I cemented them. She was a regular patient and never made any adverse comments about these crowns on subsequent visits to my surgery.

If, say, your dentist were to offer to take out two of your teeth for the price of one, and you needed to have only one tooth extracted, would you be excited by this special offer? I bet you would not.

Supermarkets are always making offers such as buy one, get one free. Once, we needed four burger buns. We entered a branch of Tesco’s in Baldock (Hertfordshire, UK) and found that burger buns were sold in packets containing twelve buns. Reluctantly, as there were no smaller packs, we took one pack of twelve. As we were heading towards the check-out desks, a lady who worked for Tesco’s chased after us. She was carrying another pack of a dozen burger buns. She said:

“You didn’t take these.”

“We only want one pack,” I told her.

“But you must take a second pack. There’s a special offer. Two for the price of one.”

I told her that we really did not need 24 burger buns; we only wanted four. As it was obvious that she was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer, we took the second pack of buns without any idea of what we were going to do with them. As far as I could see, we had simply helped Tesco empty their shelves of a perishable product, which if not sold would have had to be thrown away.

Another supermarket chain, tries to encourage purchases by offering the customer a free cup of coffee after paying for the goods. And if you have bought enough, a free newspaper is also on offer. These are nice gestures, but do they compensate for the higher than average prices of many of the goods on offer in their stores?

Parking in shopping centres can be costly. Some supermarkets have large car parks associated with them. They are often close to other shopping outlets, and charge a fee for parking. However, car owners who make a purchase in the supermarket are given a voucher that allows them to avoid paying for the parking.

Special offers are, of course, designed to attract sales. And, we as customers are often happy to take advantage of them. However, I still refuse to believe that many would go for a two for one offer on tooth extractions. But … maybe … I could tempt you to accept three extractions for the price of one!

While I was studying to become a dentist, I took advantage of an optional fortnight shadowing anaesthetists. It was not a hands-on experience, but it was totally fascinating watching anaesthetists keeping patients healthy whilst they were deeply anaesthetised.

One day during a morning coffee break, I was sitting having refreshments with a senior anaesthetist and his team. Suddenly, I heard a shrill prolonged sound coming from a nearby room. I asked a technician what it was. He told me not to worry about it.

A few moments later, the senior anaesthetist asked me:

“What is that high pitched noise?”

“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, ” I answered confidently.

“Really?” I was asked.

“Oh, yes. there’s absolutely no need to be concerned,” I advised the senior anaesthetist.

If it had been fashionable at that time, I might have told him to ‘chill’, but in those days chilling was reserved for cold weather and refrigeration.

“Hmmmm,” he replied.

After a few moments, he said to me:

“Well, actually that signal is the warning sound made by an oxygen cyinder that is about to become empty. I would really worry about it, young man.”

At that moment, I felt like a complete idiot and hoped that the ground would open up and swallow me.

There was a young receptionist at one of the dental surgeries where I once worked. Let us call her ‘M’. Engaging her in conversation was not easy, but I tried often and succeeded occasionally.

Once, M announced that she was taking a week’s holiday. When she returned, I asked her:

“How was your holiday?”

“Ok,” M replied vaguely.

“And, where did you go?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Really?” I queried.

“I just got a last minute package trip and got in the ‘plane,” she told me.

“If you don’t know where you went, what was it like?” I asked.

“Not very exciting, really. All of the beaches were covered with black rocks and stones.”

I guessed that M had probably been to one of the volcanic islands in the Atlantic. It surprised me that someone could take a flight somewhere and have no idea where she had landed. What if something awful had happened to her? Who would have known where she was?

Most people are very apprehensive about making a visit to the dentist. But, how many dentists are filled with apprehension at the prospect of seeing patients? Almost every day during my 35 years of practising dentistry, I walked into my surgery with a feeling of worry, concern about what might happen during the day.

The average non-dental person might not realise that treating patients is like walking on thin ice. With many patients in the UK just itching to sue the dentists, whom they fear, even the slightest thing might lead to a legal confrontation between the patient and the dentist. Clearly when a patient suspects that the dentist has made a clinical error, pulled the wrong tooth for example or made a filling that keeps failing, recourse to compensation is sometimes reasonable. However, something far less ‘life-threatening’ like a verbal misunderstanding can lead a litigious person to attempt to obtain remedial compensation. So, to avoid trouble and also to ensure that a patient leaves satisfied, the prudent dentist must treat each patient with tact, delicately, and clinical excellence. All that seems quite reasonable.

However, there are patients, whom the dentist dreads. The very sight of their name on the day’s appointment list can ruin the dentist’s day from the moment he spots it. These people, many of whom I wish I had been courageous enough to dismiss, often exploit the dentist’s desire to provide them with excellence. They ask for the impossible, or for things they know that they cannot possibly afford, and they are never satisfied. Worse still, they keep coming back to the surgery for minor matters, which are often unresolvable because of their sad personalities. I may sound a bit harsh, but many of the persistent complainers that I saw were unemployed, receiving their treatment free of charge (because of state subsidies), and had little else to do apart from sit in dentists’ waiting rooms.

Then, there are the dental obsessives. These patients are often quite charming until they reach the subject of their teeth. Even what you and I might hardly notice becomes a major problem for them, even a life crisis. They will keep asking the dentist to redo some small repair on a tooth because they, and only they, can perceive that there is some minute imperfection. And because of fear of complaints and litigation, I used to plough on with these people and long for retirement. Sometimes, I felt like telling them that in the grand scheme of life, a minor ‘defect’ in the teeth is nothing compared with having a major illness, or starving during a famine, or being injured in a traffic accident, but I ‘bit my tongue’.

Despite my continual anxiety about keeping the patients on my side, there was the odd occasion when a patient was genuinely grateful for something I had done. Those expressions of gratitude were worth more to me than whatever fee my treatment had attracted.

So, next time you have to visit the dentist and are filled with fear, spare a thought for the dentist, who might well be feeling the same as you, but cannot show it because it would wreck your confidence in him or her.

I passed my driving test in mid-1982, shortly after qualifying as a dentist. Like many dentists I have met, I went through a phase of fascination with cars.

My first car was second-hand. I was advised to buy something not to expensive just in case during my first months on the road I was to have had an accident. I bought an Austin Allegro from a local dealer. It seemed in great condition given its low price. However, it had at least one annoying defect: it would stop suddenly without warning. This defect was due to a loose connection in the ignition system. After a very few months, the car began emitting blue smoke from its exhaust. This was due to some major defect in the engine, which would have cost more to repair than the car itself. When I confronted the dealer, who had sold me the Allegro, he reccommended that I bought a new car. I told him that I was not happy with his response because I had had the car for such a short time.

A local garage did something temporary to the engine to improve its part-exchange value, but also advised me to obtain another vehicle. To my great surprise, the local VW dealer offered me a very good part exchange price if I bought a VW. I bought a VW Polo Formel E. This was not a car for using on the Formula One racetracks, but a comfortable, very easy to drive, practical small car. The ‘Formel E’ related to the fact that the car had a gear setting that allowed low fuel consumotion. This car served me well and would have kept on going for many years, but I had my eyes on owning a Volvo.

The first Volvo I bought was a Volvo 340, a descendant of the Dutch DAF models. Like the Allegro, mine had a persistent problem. It also stopped suddenly and without warning. Despite many visits to the local Volvo dealer, no one could solve the problem. Eventually, Volvo recalled my car for a modification to rectify a design fault in the carburettor. After that, the 340 behaved well and survived a rear end shunt with very little damage. My lust for another car sent me back to the car showrooms after about two years.

I bought a Volvo 240 estate car. Though enormous and looking aerodynamically inefficient, this car was superb. It handled as easily as my relatively tiny VW Polo had done, and it could fly along if speed was needed. Once on the autobahn in West Germany, I managed to move the car at 105 mph uphill, and even then my foot had not completely pressed the accelerator pedal to its fullest extent. This spacious, easily manoevrable car carried me right across Europe from Kent to Belgrade, and on another trip from Kent to Budapest. Why I traded in this Volvo 240 for a newer Volvo 240, I cannot recall. Both 240s were excellent, but a new model of Volvo had arrive on the market place.

I part exchanged my perfectly good Volvo 240 estate for a brand new Volvo 850 saloon. This was a complete disappointment after the 240 models. It looked good by Volvo standards but was not pleasurable to drive. When I took it to a Volvo dealer a couple of years later, I was offered a pathetic part-exchange price against a new Volvo. I was told that the 850 did not sell well second-hand.

Very disappointed with Volvo, I rang the local Saab dealership. When they learned my wife was pregnant, they offered to bring a model of the Saab (in our price range) to our home so that I could take it for a test-drive. As soon as I sat in the driving seat, I knew that we had to own a Saab. We bought a Saab 900, which lasted us well for a few years, and would have lasted us much longer had we not decided to trade it in for a newer model before its resale price dropped too far. We bought a Saab 9-3, which sadly lacked some of the quality of the first Saab we owned.

Ten years ago, we set out to attend our friends’ golden wedding anniversary party in rural Kent. Before leaving London, we replaced our four tires as required after we had the results of our car’s official car inspection (MOT test). We arrived early and decided to visit a bonsai nursery that we had seen a few years earlier. When we returned to the car, ready to drive to the party, I turned the ignition key and all that happened was a grinding noise from the engine. We called the AA (roadside assistance), who arrived quickly. The engineer looked at the enging and discovered that the fan belt had slipped off its mountings. Worse than that, one of the parts of the engine thatrelied on the fan belt had a severely distorted metal part. We asked the enginner roughly how much it would cost to repair the fault. He said he thought it would be at least £300.

Now, when I had last visited the Saab garage, I had asked for a part-exchange quote for our now ageing car. I was told that £400 would be generous. Consequently, we decided not to replace the car, but to sell it to scrap dealers, who gave us a paltry sum for it. Since then, we have not owned an auto, and life has been, surprisingly, less stressful.

You may be wondering how we reached the party. The kind AA engineer took us to a local car hire place, and we picked up a car (paid for by the AA as part of our membership plan), and arrived quite late at the party.